What's wrong with 'Cisgender'

[ASugar]

As someone who identifies as a cisgender woman and works in sexual health, I am honestly confused as to why so many females (sex term) who identify with being women (gender term) dislike the term Cisgender?

Now I'm not here to tell you what to say, I am genuinely curious.

However, here is my opinion for those who may be interested.

Cisgender just means you are not transgender. That your sex links you your gender and you assign any gender terms (ie. Pronouns, Gender identity, sometimes gender expression but not always, etc). I personally don't like to think that just because I was born with a vagina means I am a woman because I know many men with vaginas and women with penises. Additionally those who don't have a gender identity, then that would mean you wouldn't use women and men as they're gender terms (according to medical professionals). It would make you non binary or agender.

I understand that the term 'Cis' has been used to insult others which for that I am sorry.
My view is that if you can't allow trans women to be accepted in society and identified as women (without the need for 'trans' infront of it constantly) then we should be using cisgender. It is a medical term that professionals such as the NHS recognize. But I understand that is just my opinion.

I probably won't be commenting as I can imagine this will be filled with comments and I don't want to disrespect anyone's views. Just a cisgender woman who wants to understand more...

And as always I would appreciate if you respect my view as I'm going to be respecting all of yours.

@PheasantPlucker1

Trying to divide everyone into cis and trans is like asking if they are Catholic or Protestant.

Unbleievers wont fit either catergory, for religion or gender.

There we go, phrased far more simply than my rambling explanations 😂

I knew it was a loaded term the first time I heard talk of ‘cis privilege’.

It’s another term which says ‘shut up about x because you can’t talk about it’.

Exactly this.

Just a cisgender woman who wants to understand more...

Except most of your post is telling us what we should think. And misinterpreting or re-interpreting the meanings of perfectly simple words.

Among my favourite childhood books were the Alice books:

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ... "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

You mean like heterosexual/straight?

Homo/bi/hetero/asexual are descriptors of sexual orientation. Your equivalence here is wrong. It would be like labelling someone as 'xxx-heterosexual'.

ie. a subset of a group based on sexual orientation.

Do you understand when people object to terms like "infidel," or "heathen?"

In these cases you are assuming the belief is somehow a default and identifying people with respect to it. You are using the language of a system people don't ascribe to, to put unnecessary labels on them.

Cis presumes a gender identity, which most people don't have. It's similar and the use of "cishet" is used to dismiss opinions, as an insult in much the same way as belief systems have done for years.

Also if there was cis privilege, it would apply when comparing men with a trans identity to men without one. It can't be just used to compare women and trans women as if male sex advantages are just brushed over and not important. That's what feminists are fighting against.

A label is usually either to label someone benefitting from a power structure or to label someone in order to disempower them.
I don't see a power structure that I'm benefitting from, so it's being used to disempower me.
I feel really sorry for women who use it.
It's also not lost on me that it sounds a LOT like "sissy" which is a fetish borne of a misogynistic stereotype of a woman.

Oh would it now? Look at you just handing these little titles out for free, aren't you nice. You can stick my non-binary agender up your chuff

This has made my day after the multiple threads by the OP. Thanks for that

OP, why do you need to drop your trousers and dump on everything our foresisters fought for? All in the name of being 'woke'? Did you ever consider that you are on the wrong side of history in your attempt to sell out our hard won rights and IDENTITY by our foresisters?

Really, it means a female human female.

I don't see why people are upset by terminology that is used for clarity as society changes

= I haven't made any effort to properly read and comprehend the views of the women on this thread and I'm more than happy to remain in ignorance of how they view the term and how it makes them feel because that's progressive, or something.

Because it's not used for 'for clarity', it's highly ideological used to erase the category of biological women and their hard-fought protections by turning actual women into a subcategory of a redefined idea of 'women'. Surely that's not difficult to understand?

You'd think.

No OP

You are using the language of a system people don't ascribe to, to put unnecessary labels on them.

Sums it up for me.

I know many men with vaginas and women with penises.

You really don’t.

Seems like everyone can identify themselves however they want...except for women identifying as women.

That, basically.

I find all this navel gazing about genders, identities and labels is so very tedious. (How many of these identical threads have we had so far this week?)
I was born female and had people labelling me as they see fit all of my life because they think its their right and it still to this day has fuck all to do with me.
I am a woman, that is all. The rest is just personality.

I feel so sorry for the people who get all wrapped up in gender ideology it must be so consuming trying to figure out which identity they fit in with rather than just living their lives and being themselves.

@Icenii

So are people campaigning to get rid of gender altogether and just use sex? Or do certain communities not like this?

Sorry, I only dip I'm and out but want to start talking to DD about this.

In a perfect world we would accept that humans are male or female with a few exceptions who have chromsomal abnormalities. They too are either male or female but their body may, or may not, show some characteristics of the opposite sex.

Then we would also accept that people are poeple and throughout history have taken social mores and played with them, overturned them, lived outside them, been hurt by them, controlled by them.

Gender is one of those social mores. It has changed over the centuries. Is different across the world but essentially gender expression is based in sex stereotypes. The stereotypes that used to have men wearing stockings and high heels and now, a few hundred years later, means that women wear them to be beasutiful!

Back in the 80s we had gender bending, Boy George, Marylin, Annie Lennox, k d lang etc. Youth culture threw gender expectations out of the window and had a bit of blast!

Then the 90s hit and things got metrosexual!

Then the Spice Girls exemplified the swing back into gendered roles. No matter what Girl Power was it looked like 1950s housewives on a day out to Cleethorpes.

Then they went to Vegas, baby. Then hit the West Coast. Go themselves all Kardashianed. The greater the stereotypical look the better. The more hyper sexualised the better.

Better not go into the pornification of both women as real people and of women as an image. That eads to the current vogue (via Madge obviously) for drag queens and the sexualisation of all things female!

So gender is, to me, the idea of the perfect women, glamourous housewife, biddable, all that make up and heels etc. Look at various profile pictures on things like LinkedIn. Business women in sensible poses, business transwomen chin on hand, sideways on looking sexy!

It actually has nothing to do with transpeople at all. Its just the way society likes to imagine its perfect man, its perfect woman - starting wth Adam and Eve, women get to be the baddies!

@Winesalot

You mean like heterosexual/straight?

Homo/bi/hetero/asexual are descriptors of sexual orientation. Your equivalence here is wrong. It would be like labelling someone as 'xxx-heterosexual'.

ie. a subset of a group based on sexual orientation.

I mean someone saying 'x-woman' or 'x-man'.

I am a woman. I am not a cis woman. I don't believe in gender identity. I used to identify as a punk when I was 14 but grew out of it.

I just don't see the need to use Cis gender. If your a woman then your a woman. If your a trans woman. Then it's obvious.

I think and this is only a theory, that people don't like it because it's devaluation. Because one moment people say words arnt important when trying to de sex somthing, say breast feeding as a most recent example. Then those same people are fighting for their own words. It dosnt work like that. So calling a gender a Cis gender is devaluation of a person's identity.
And for woman this is an extremely sensitive, rightly so, topic. We've had to fight for our value. We still are!

My sex doesn’t need clarification. I’m a woman. Full stop.

My cat is a male cat. Not a cis male cat. It’s a biological term.

Also I suspect that this language is mostly used in relation women as well and not to men. Therefore its misogynistic anti women bullshit.
Trying to subcategorise the majority.